Saturday, 30 August 2014

For my fellow citizens and businesses of honest enterprise being eaten alive by foreign financial ticket clipping middlemen, this is for you.

British colonial heritage old boys private central banking network have control of New Zealand under conditions of receivership via its International Monetary Fund (IMF) receivership branch backed up by its old boys Commercial Contract Law network legal branch known as the International Committee for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) that operates under the umbrella of the Worldbank.

The Worldbank and IMF are conduit institutions that can be traced back to the senior most institutions of the British colonial heritage old boys private central banking network that are owned by the family trusts of the worlds ultra-inter-generational-wealth-families.

The Worldbank gives out the predatory interest bearing loans of counterfeit credit in excess of the productive natural resource capacity of the target nation to ever be able to repay. Then when the mathematically inevitable bankruptcy receivership occurs, the IMF is put in charge of bankruptcy receivership, supposedly attempting to trade you out of your financial troubles.

Joseph E. Stiglitz - "I watched carefully what the IMF had done, the mistakes that it had made in crisis countries in East Asia, Latin America, Africa and the economies in transition. The mistakes were sufficiently frequent that they clearly weren’t just an accident – as an academic you look for patterns.

There were a couple of obvious explanations. One was that they were incompetent, stupid people. But that argument is just not persuasive – they pay among the highest wages, they get good people.
You could say it was bad economic models. But there is an array of economic models out there and they chose to use ones that led to wrong predictions, wrong policies and really negative consequences.
So why did they choose them? One is left with a possible answer that they had different objectives, that their objective in going into a country was not, for example, to keep employment as high as possible or to minimize poverty."

And then of course it all starts to make sense. You ask: ‘Who makes the decision, and on whose behalf do they make those decisions?’ You look at the decision-making structure – at the IMF the United States is the only country with a veto, other countries are represented by central bank governors and finance ministers. They were looking at the world with a particular perspective, a particular ideology that was in accord with their interests. And their interests were to make sure the creditors got paid. That took precedence over what would be good for the country.
End quote

In New Zealand by 1961 the predatory lending of counterfeit credit from the British colonial heritage old boys private central banking network had run New Zealand into bankruptcy receivership. At which time it was put into the hands of there receivership branch the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under a Structural Adjustment Program that I would argue, as former WorldBank Vice President Joseph E. Stiglitz does, that they have since on purpose traded New Zealand even deeper into further bankruptcy receivership's and demanded that its essentials of life public assets be sold on the open market.

These procedures are enforced by international arbitration courts in which commercial contract law supersedes individual human rights common law.
All governments of New Zealand have since officially denied the growing influence of the conduit institutions of the British colonial heritage old boys private central banking network over its economic model, as evidenced here;http://publiccreditorbust.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/rob-muldoon-new-zealand-prime-minister.html
The New Zealand Economy, A Personal view, by Rob Muldoon 1985
Page 33-34;
page 52;
The fact that even in good years we did not show an overall surplus on our external current account and had to borrow and even draw from the IMF was also of concern, so that we were forced to move to restrain not just consumption, but capital development as well.
page 61;
It was in 1967 that, as a result of the wool slump, we borrowed into the higher tranches by way of drawings from the International Monetary Fund and gave the fund a controversial letter of intent. The semantics of a letter of intent as debatable then as they are today when the Fund has some 40 such arrangements. When the left wing politicians and academics claimed that the Fund had laid down conditions before permitting us to draw in the higher tranches, I insisted, as did the Fund, that it was up to the Government of the member country to indicate the policies that it would pursue in order to restore balance to its economy, while the Fund made its decision on whether or not to agree to the drawings in light of the policies that were proposed.
End quote

I Iain Parker sent this email to Minister of Finance Michael Cullen 4 September 2007 ;
Regards Dr Cullen,
1) I am seeking any information now eligible for release, regarding the secret Memorandums of understanding, or Structural adjustment programs imposed upon us by the IMF/World Bank during the restructuring of our(NZ) nations debts or what was essentially liquidation, in 1961 and 1984?
2) To your knowledge, the money used by registered bond traders, who are the only ones eligible to purchase the larger blocks of our govt bonds, all of whom are the private stakeholders of what is referred to as the "Central banking system", to your knowledge does this so called "Power money" have any net tangible backing, or is it merely created as digital bits on a computer, then loaned into the system as interest bearing debt, only given its value by the promised repayment out of the future taxes of the nation.?
Yours sincerely
Iain Parker

I received this reply from the Acting Minister of Finance Trevor Mallard 2 October 2007 ;
Dear Iain Parker
Thank you for your letter which was received on 5 September 2007 concerning an Official Information Act request. You requested:
1) I am seeking any information now eligible for release, regarding the secret Memorandums of understanding, or Structural adjustment programs imposed upon us by the IMF/World Bank during the restructuring of our(NZ) nations debts or what was essentially liquidation, in 1961 and 1984?
2) To your knowledge, the money used by registered bond traders, who are the only ones eligible to purchase the larger blocks of our govt bonds, all of whom are the private stakeholders of what is referred to as the "Central banking system", to your knowledge does this so called "Power money" have any net tangible backing, or is it merely created as digital bits on a computer, then loaned into the system as interest bearing debt, only given its value by the promised repayment out of the future taxes of the nation.?

New Zealand joined the IMF and the World Bank in 1961. There was no financial crisis in New Zealand at the time and New Zealand did not restructure its debt as a result of joining. There are no secret memoranda of understanding and no structural adjustment programmes were imposed on New Zealand. All the documents related to the decision to join the two institutions are publicly available from Archives New Zealand.
In June 1984, New Zealand drew down its Reserve Tranche at the IMF. The Reserve Tranche is essentially a countries foreign currency deposit with the IMF and can be drawn on at any time for balance of payments reasons without requiring approval from the IMF board. There is no conditionality attached to such a drawing and so no structural adjustment programme was imposed.
Once again, all relevant documents are publicly available at Archives New Zealand.
Accordingly, I have decided to refuse your request under section 18(d) of the Official Information Act 1982 - that the information you requested is or will soon be publicly available.
In response to your second question, registered bidders in New Zealand government Bond tenders purchase New Zealand government bonds using cash which they get from their shareholders, from profits on their operations or from borrowing against future income. Please note that bidders may purchase bonds on their own behalf or on behalf of other investors. The bonds are issued on behalf of the Crown by the New Zealand Debt Management Office (NZDMO). The Reserve Bank conducts the bond tenders as agent for the NZDMO. When the bonds mature, the Crown repays them with funding from a variety of sources, such as its cash surplus, revenue from taxation and other sources or by undertaking new borrowing. Interest on the bonds is paid from the same sources.
This fully covers the information you requested.
Yours sincerely
Hon Trevor Mallard
Acting Minister of Finance.

On the 5 October 2007 I sent this reply to Trevor Mallard;
Regards Hon Trevor Mallard,
could you please advise me, as to whether you researched and provided this answer yourself, thus are prepared to stake your present and future political reputation on it, or was it provided by one of the many State Sector advisers at your disposal. If the latter is the case, could you please provide me with the name and department of the author.
Thank you
Iain Parker

I then received on 10 October 2007 this reply from Michael Cullen;
Dear Mr Parker
I have received your email regarding the answer to your Official Information Act Request which was signed out by the Hon Trevor Mallard in my absence.
I am satisfied with the contents of the reply that you received from my acting minister. This request was dealt with under the standard procedures for replying to requests under the Act.
In this case, the draft reply was prepared on my behalf by Andrew Turner, Head of Portfolio Management at the Treasury.
Yours sincerely
Hon Dr Michael Cullen
Minister of Finance
end quotes

This information below from the New Zealand parliamentary record makes it clear that the above rebutting of the growing control by the IMF over New Zealand economic affairs was misleading and makes very clear that IMF regulation now becomes automatic financial system law within New Zealand without having to pass through the New Zealand parliament to be debated or voted upon;http://publiccreditorbust.blogspot.co.nz/2014/08/new-zealand-international-finance.html
New Zealand Minister of Finance the Hon BILL ENGLISH said in the debate;
“I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Our commitments to the IMF are effectively premiums to an insurance policy against damage to our economy from an unstable world....... New Zealand has already agreed to these changes, and adopting the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill simply puts that agreement into practice......The bill also creates a regulation-making power in the principal Act so that further updates to the articles can be made by regulation. This power will simplify the process by which New Zealand meets its obligations. Once changes to the articles are agreed to by the requisite majority of members of the international financial institutions, New Zealand will be bound by the amendments, which means that we are required to bring our domestic legislation into line with our international obligations.”
end

New Zealand opposition party finance spokesperson Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) said in debate;
“I rise to speak to this bill, the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill, on behalf of the Labour Party. The Labour Party will be supporting this bill to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. The Labour Party supports the function of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and broadly agrees with the Minister of Finance that these are good institutions that assist the conduct of international economic affairs in a way that benefits New Zealand as well as other countries......I think New Zealanders will have more confidence in our participation in these international fora if they think that Governments are being transparent about changes to those international agreements and the effect of those changes on New Zealand. There is already enough suspicion out there as to the effect of international agreements. We breed further suspicion if we are not open and transparent about changes to those rules......For those reasons, amongst others, the Labour Party opposes future changes to this legislation by way of the statutory regulation-making power that this amendment Act creates. We believe that future amendments ought to come back to this Parliament. If we look back in the history, it has not been an onerous task for New Zealand to amend this legislation through annual amendments or anything like that. It is relatively rare that we have amendments to this International Finance Agreements Act, which dates back to 1975. “
end quotes

New Zealand Green Party Co-Leader - Russel Norman - having displayed a sense of growing environmental and social injustice - had “come out” - asking hard questions of the current money system orthodoxy after his 21 Feb 2013 International Finance Agreement Amendment Bill third reading - in which Russel Norman admitted to having only recently gained an understanding of just how New Zealand money supply originates and under what terms and conditions;http://publiccreditorbust.blogspot.co.nz/2014/08/new-zealand-international-finance.html
"The other thing that comes out of, I think, the IMF that surprises a lot of people is when the IMF says things like most of the money that is generated is generated by the private banks. Most of us, I think—and I was certainly one of these people, until reading IMF papers—always assume that the Government created the money. That is just because I actually did not follow it closely enough, whereas the IMF is very clear that it is the private banks that create most of the money. What the IMF—or, at least, some of the researchers within the IMF—is now saying is that the Government should use its ability to create money, so that there is some publicly created money as well as the privately created money, most of which is created by the private banks.
This, of course, is a pretty radical proposition, and the IMF, in putting forward this proposition, has certainly been shaking the policy debates around monetary policy all over the world, except in New Zealand, of course, where we are kind of locked into some weird backwater where the Government does not want to have a debate around any of this kind of stuff. But if you read the international literature, it is pretty good."
end quote

Russel Norman made clear his views again - and clearly had not yet buckled - in this 27 May 2013 article;
"In the debate around monetary policy, it is often forgotten that the default position is that the private banks create most of the money and lead the increase in the monetary supply. They then charge interest to the users of the money that they have created......The debate should be: what constraints should apply to the private creation of money given the banks’ irresponsible behaviour in the past; and should the public institutions be expanding money supply as a policy tool, to what extent, and to what purpose? Should the state be allowed to also increase the money supply for public purposes such as refilling the Natural Disaster Fund and to see what effect it can have on reducing the very damaging high NZ dollar?
The answers to these questions aren't black and white but for my pick I think we need to restrain the banks lending into the housing bubble and use a trial public creation of money to restock the Natural Disaster Fund – both to be prepared for future disasters and to see what impact it would have on the dollar.
It is of course difficult to have a rational conversation around these issues in the current political context (ie Key’s scaremongering) but it is an important conversation for rational adults to have. We do have an out of control current account deficit and if we want to be masters of our own destiny we need to change policy settings as under Key’s plan our deficit and debt increase dramatically."
end quote

This is like the pot calling the kettle black, but sadly George Soros would know better than most that nothing has changed since 2008. Maybe he is trying to distance himself from what he has been a big part of?http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10684896/George-Soros-blasts-parasite-banks.html
George Soros, the billionaire investor, believes the banking sector is a “parasite” holding back the economic recovery and an “incestuous” relationship with regulators means little has been done to resolve the issues behind the 2008 crisis.
“The banking sector is acting as a parasite on the real economy,” Mr Soros said in his new book “The Tragedy of the European Union”.
“The profitability of the finance industry has been excessive. For a while 35pc of all corporate profits in the United Kingdom and the United States came from the financial sector. That’s absurd.”
Mr Soros outlined how the problems that caused the Eurozone economic crisis remain largely unresolved.
“Very little has been done to correct the excess leverage in the European banking system. The equity in the banks relative to their balance sheets is wafer thin, and that makes them very vulnerable.
End quote

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is an organization akin to the Board of Directors representing the network of nations that have private owned and controlled money systems said in its 2014 annual report;

"The overall, somewhat gloomy message from the central bankers was that the world is drunk on easy money and has already forgotten the lessons of recent years.
Instead of adding to productive capacity, large firms prefer to buy back shares or engage in mergers and acquisitions.
The temptation to postpone adjustment can prove irresistible, especially when times are good and financial booms sprinkle the fairy dust of illusory riches.
The consequence is a growth model that relies too much on debt, both private and public, and which over time sows the seeds of its own demise.”http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/business/international/central-bankers-issue-strong-warning-on-asset-bubbles.html?_r=0

The Bank for International Settlements, the world's most prestigious financial body, has warned that years of loose monetary policy has fuelled a dangerous credit bubble, leaving the global economy more vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump than generally understood.
"Virtually nobody foresaw the Great Depression of the 1930s, or the crises which affected Japan and southeast Asia in the early and late 1990s. In fact, each downturn was preceded by a period of non-inflationary growth exuberant enough to lead many commentators to suggest that a 'new era' had arrived", said the bank.
The BIS, the ultimate bank of central bankers, pointed to a confluence a worrying signs, citing mass issuance of new-fangled credit instruments, soaring levels of household debt, extreme appetite for risk shown by investors, and entrenched imbalances in the world currency system.
"Behind each set of concerns lurks the common factor of highly accommodating financial conditions. Tail events affecting the global economy might at some point have much higher costs than is commonly supposed," it said.
End quote

I allege the warnings put out by the Bank of International Settlements in 2007 was a dog whistle for those out side of the insider British colonial heritage old boys private central banking families, that had helped those families set up another pyramid fraud scam, to now cash out their gains from financial markets because they were set to spring the trap.

The predatory trap being they had again authorised more credit than there existed the productive natural resource collateral means of repayment. That they had collected a fortune of purchasing power by way of interest repayments gained on the counterfeit credit. That they were now about to start calling in loans or increasing the interest charged on credit under the guise of stabalising the financial system. Thus causing a recession involving much bankruptcy receivership's in which they and those who assisted them would use their proceeds of crime purchasing power they had gained to buy up at quickfire sale prices the assets that borrowers had built with their blood-sweat and tears.

Now take a look at more of the warnings from the BIS recent 2014 annual report;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/business/international/central-bankers-issue-strong-warning-on-asset-bubbles.html?_r=0
The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) provides financial services to national central banks and also acts as a setting where central bankers can discuss monetary policy and other issues like financial stability or bank regulation. The board of directors includes Janet L. Yellen, chairwoman of the Federal Reserve; Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank; and the heads of central banks from Japan, China, India and many other countries.

The organization, which reflects a widespread view among central bankers that they are bearing more than their share of the burden of fixing the global economy, often uses its annual reports to send a message to political leaders, commercial bankers and investors. But the B.I.S.’s language in the 2014 edition was unusually direct, as was its warning that the world could be hurtling toward a new crisis.

“There is a disappointing element of déjà vu in all this,” Claudio Borio, head of the monetary and economic department at the B.I.S., said in an interview ahead of Sunday’s release of the report.

He described the report “as a call to action.”

The organization said governments should do more to improve the performance of their economies, such as reducing restrictions on hiring and firing. The report also urged banks to raise more capital as a cushion against risk and to speed efforts to deal with past problems. Countries that are growing quickly, like some emerging markets, must be alert to the danger of overheating, the group said.

“The signs of financial imbalances are there,” Mr. Borio said. “That’s why we are emphasizing it is important to take further action while the time is still there.”

To understand how a New Zealand old boys network of lawyers are already busy on global arbitration panels confiscating the commonwealth essentials of life natural resources of nations on behalf of intra-national corporations that are party related to the British colonial heritage old boys private central banking network please read the details below of the New Zealand Arbitration (International Investment Disputes) Act 1979 and loss of economic sovereignty that has resulted.

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1979/0039/latest/whole.html
An Act to implement an international Convention on the settlement of investment disputes between States and nationals of other States
1Short Title
This Act may be cited as the Arbitration (International Investment Disputes) Act 1979.
2 Interpretation
In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires,—
award means an award made pursuant to the Convention; and includes—
(a)any decision made pursuant to the Convention that interprets, revises, or annuls an award; and
(b)any decision as to costs that, pursuant to the Convention, is to form part of an award
Centre means the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes established pursuant to the Convention
Convention means the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States that was opened for signature in Washington on 18 March 1965, a copy of the English text of which is set out in the Schedule.
3Act binds the Crown
This Act binds the Crown.
Section 3: substituted, on 15 November 2000, by section 3 of the Arbitration (International Investment Disputes) Amendment Act 2000 (2000 No 52).

The Trans-Pacific-Partnership-Trade-Agreement (TPPA ) being negotiated by governments behind closed doors in secret, put very simply in my opinion, is an attempt by the British colonial heritage private central banking network pyramid scammers to boost the power of intra-national commercial contract law institutions that they implemented post World War 2 at the 1945 Bretton Woods monetary system conference, in order to make it harder for nation states to take back what they have had stolen from them under false pretenses in repeated financial system pyramid frauds ever since.

The New Zealand government signed up to the International Committee for the Settlement of Investment Disputes - ICSID - in 1970 - ratifying in 1980 – that has seen New Zealand lawyers involved global arbitration processes that have more often than not seen the findings fall in favour of corportions under very questionable circumstances;

Chapman Tripp acts in first ever bilateral investment treaty hearing held in New Zealand
27 April 2012
Leading New Zealand law firm Chapman Tripp, acting as co-counsel with international law firm Salans, have secured a successful decision in the first ever bilateral investment treaty arbitration hearing held in New Zealand.

In what follows I have tried to gather information from publicly available sources regarding some of the questions which have troubled my mind lately. It is hoped that the results would be of interest to the readers. For me, this proved to be one of my most exciting projects so far. The idea was conceived during my work in the IMCCA – Bulgaria (International Moot Court Competition Association) which unites past and present Ph. C. Jessup Moot Court participants (as well as participants from other moot courts) who share their love for International Law in a country where it is not lectured in-depth in universities. IMCCA and America for Bulgaria Foundation provide us with the necessary stimuli to learn more and to achieve more.

The information presented is subject to the caveat that not all ICSID awards are public or may have otherwise escaped my acquisition efforts. In this and any other regard, I would appreciate further supplement or corrections.

Which is the first ICSID award?
The Award rendered on August 29, 1977 in the case of Adriano Gardella S.p.A. v. Côte d’Ivoire (ICSID Case No. ARB/74/1).
What is the highest award amount so far?
The highest award amount of US$ 1,769,625,000 was awarded in the case of Occidental v. Ecuador (ICSID Case No. ARB/06/11) Award of October 5, 2012.

What is the lowest award amount so far?
It seems that the lowest award amount of US$ 460,000 (as principal) was awarded in Asian Agricultural Products Ltd. v. Sri Lanka (ICSID Case No. ARB/87/3) Award of June 27, 1990.

How much does an ICSID case cost in terms of legal costs?
The information below was intended to bring light to the question how much does an ICSID case cost in terms of legal representation. The information provided must be retained with caution since legal costs depend, among others, on the duration and the complexity of the case. Moreover, many awards are not publicly available and most Tribunals order that each party bears its own costs of legal representation without mentioning the sums.
Here are some examples of the practice of ICSID Tribunals:
● In CDC v. Seychelles (ICSID Case No. ARB/02/14) Award of December 17, 2003, Seychelles were ordered to pay the Claimant the sum of £ 100,000 representing legal fees.
● In Pantechniki v. Albania (ICSID Case No. ARB/07/21) Award of July 30, 2009, the cost claims of the parties were among the lowest – EUR 154,523 and EUR 269,657, respectively.
● In Telenor Mobile v. Hungary (ICSID Case No. ARB/04/15) Award of September 13, 2006, the Counsel for Hungary demanded the reimbursement of US$ 1,249,340.29.
● In Siag v. Egypt (ICSID Case No.ARB/05/15) Award of June 1, 2009, Egypt was ordered to pay the the sum of USD 6,000,000 in legal costs.
● In Spyridon Roussalis v. Romania (ICSID Case No. ARB/06/1) Award of December 7, 2011, the Claimant had to pay 60% of the Respondent’s legal fees in the amount of EUR 6,053,443.78.
● The Tribunal in Cementownia Nowa Huta S.A. v. Turkey (ICSID Case No. ARB(AF)/06/2) Award of September 17, 2009 found that:
“the Respondent’s legal fees and expenses are not unreasonable having regard to the course of these proceedings and that, therefore, the Claimant is to bear such costs in the amount of USD 4,904,822.06.” (para. 178)
● In Kardassopoulos & Fuchs v. Georgia (ICSID Case Nos. ARB/05/18 and ARB/07/15) Award of March 3, 2010, the Respondent was liable to pay the Claimants their costs for the proceedings in the total amount of US$ 7,942,297.
● In ADC v. Hungary (ICSID Case No. ARB/03/16) Award of October 2, 2006, the Claimant demanded US$ 7,623,693 in respect of the Claimants’ costs and expenses. The Tribunal found
“no reason to depart from the starting point that the successful party should receive reimbursement from the unsuccessful party.” (para. 533)
See also Abaclat et al. v. Argentina (ICSID Case No. ARB/07/5) at para. 682.
● The Tribunal in Gemplus & Talsud v. United Mexican States (ICSID Cases Nos. ARB (AF)/04/3 & ARB (AF)/04/4)) Award of June 16, 2010 recognized that:
“It is well-known that legal costs incurred by respondent-state parties are usually much lower than costs incurred by claimant-private parties, partly because a claimant bears a greater burden in presenting and proving its case, partly because a state’s billing practices with its legal representatives are different and partly, as here, where there is more than one claimant bringing claims under more than one treaty.” (para. 17-25)

Which is the longest merits award (in terms of length)?
Gemplus & Talsud v. United Mexican States (ICSID Cases Nos. ARB (AF)/04/3 & ARB (AF)/04/4)) Award of June 16, 2010 – 382 pages
Are there claims filed by a State against an investor?
Gabon v. Société Serete S.A. (ICSID Case No. ARB/76/1)
The basis of jurisdiction was a contract. The case was eventually settled.
Romania’s counterclaim in Spyridon Roussalis v. Romania (ICSID Case No. ARB/06/1) was admitted on the basis of the umbrella clause found in Article Article 2(6) of the Romania-Greece BIT. (Award of December 7, 2011, para. 781)
Which cases may be called landmark cases?
While it may be said that every decision and award rendered by an ICSID Tribunal (or committee) contains interesting findings of law, among them the following may be mentioned as particularly interesting:
● Santa Elena v. Costa Rica (ICSID Case No. ARB/96/1) Final award of February 17, 2000, on the compound interest. Up until this point, most of the ICSID Tribunals denied awarding compound interest relying on a citation from Marjorie Whiteman in her book Damages in International Law vol. III (1943) at p. 1997:
“[t]here are few rules within the scope of the subject of damages in international law that are better settled than the one that compound interest is not allowable.”
This is, among other things, evidence of the influence a scholar can have on international law.
● Maffezini v. Spain (ICSID Case No. ARB/97/7) Award of November 9, 2000, as to attribution of State responsibility.
● Salini v. Morocco (ICSID Case No. ARB/00/4) Decision on Jurisdiction of July 23, 2001, regarding the so-called Salini test for the notion of investment.
● Vivendi v. Argentina (ICSID Case No. ARB/97/3) First Annulment, Decision on Annulment dated July 3, 2002, as to the relation between treaty and contract.
● SGS v. Pakistan (ICSID Case No. ARB/01/13) Decision of the Tribunal on objections to jurisdiction of August 6, 2003 and SGS v. Philippines(ICSID Case No. ARB/02/6) Decision of the Tribunal on objections to jurisdiction of January 29, 2004, with regard to the so-called umbrella clause.
● ADC v. Hungary (ICSID Case No. ARB/03/16) Award of October 2, 2006, in relation to valuation in cases of unlawful expropriation.
● Phoenix Action v. the Czech Republic (ICSID Case No. ARB/06/5) Award of April 15, 2009, as to bona fide investments.
● Abaclat et al. v. Argentina (ICSID Case No. ARB/07/5) Decision on jurisdiction and admissibility August 4, 2011, regarding admissibility of mass claims of 60,000 Claimants (the total number of whom at the time of initiation of the arbitration exceeded 180,000) mostly natural persons of Italian nationality relating to bonds issued by Argentina.

Which States have refused to comply with ICSID awards or have considerably obstructed compliance?
Argentina is well known for its interpretation of Articles 53 and 54, i.e. that the successful Claimant’s recourse to enforcement in its national courts is a pre-condition for payment of the award (See for e.g. Enron v. Argentina (ICSID Case No. ARB/01/3) Decision on the Argentine Republic’s Request for a Continued Stay of Enforcement of the Award, 7 October 2008, available here).

Which States have withdrawn from the ICSID Convention?
Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela.

Which States are not parties to the ICSID Convention?
Brazil and India are not among the 158 Members to the ICSID Convention.

Other curious facts
● After the award in the RSM v. Grenada (ICSID Case No. ARB/05/14) was rendered, RSM tried to sue Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP counsel for Grenada alleging that Freshfields conspired to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act by, for e.g., Jan Paulsson and Brian King being part of the conspiracy to bribe Grenada officials and deny RSM its licensing rights. RSM claimed the excess of US$500 million in damages. The claim was dismissed. See US District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 10-00457 availablehere.
● Both the Claimant and the Respondent in the Europe Cement Investment v. Turkey (ICSID Case No. ARB(AF)/07/2) Award of August 13, 2009, ended up claiming that the Tribunal lacked jurisdiction. This is one of the Uzan family-related cases against Turkey. The Claimant wanted to discontinue the proceedings but the Respondent State disagreed. (See para. 139 of the Award)

Funniest quote from an ICSID award
“[H]appiness is multiple pipelines”
Mentioned in the case of Kardassopoulos & Fuchs v. Georgia (ICSID Case Nos. ARB/05/18 and ARB/07/15) Award of March 3, 2010, para. 5, in relation to the Western Route which was of
“significant national and strategic importance for Georgia as a means of securing its sovereignty following the break up of the Soviet Union and deepening its ties to the West.” (para. 3)
Recommendations
The site of ICSID is informative and accessible. Still it may be improved by, for e.g., adding information as to the basis of the jurisdiction in the particular case, nationality of the Claimant, amount claimed, amount awarded, who represented the parties, which was the successful party, costs of the proceedings, etc.
End

Largest Award Ever in Bilateral Investment Treaty Case at ICSID
07 November 2012
In the largest arbitral award ever to be rendered by a tribunal at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), the Republic of Ecuador has been ordered to pay $1,769,625,000 (US) for terminating an oil production investment held by the U.S. company, Occidental Petroleum. Arbitrators in the case were Canadian lawyer, L. Yves Fortier QC, retired New Zealand judge David AR Williams, and retired French law professor Brigitte Stern.
Occidental filed for arbitration under the U.S.-Ecuador bilateral investment treaty (BIT) following Ecuador’s May 2006 decision to terminate a participation contract for Block 15 located in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Authorities blamed the move on Oxy’s having improperly transferred a share of its Ecuadorian production activity to a Canadian energy firm.
In a 336 page award an ICSID arbitral tribunal conceded that Occidental had breached the terms of the participation contract by failing to obtain government authorization for the transfer of rights. However, arbitrators held that Ecuador’s decision to strip Occidental of its investment and its failure to pay compensation were disproportionate, and in breach of Ecuador’s treaty obligations to provide for “fair and equitable treatment” and to refrain from expropriating assets without compensation. Arbitrators also found that Ecuador’s actions breached its own laws.
The damages awarded by arbitrators reflect the value of Occidental’s investment as of May 2006 when its contact was terminated, minus a 25% deduction due to Occidental’s own breach of the participation contract. Ecuador must also pay interest of 4.18% on the awarded sum, compounded annually, to reflect the increase in value of the damages from May 2006 until the time of the arbitral award.
In a dissenting opinion Ecuador’s nominee to the three member arbitral tribunal, expressed her agreement with the majority’s analysis of the facts and the law, including its finding that Ecuador acted disproportionately in response to what she termed Occidental’s “serious violation” of Ecuadorian law.
However, Prof. Stern expressed “complete disagreement with the way damages have been calculated”, and would have favoured a 50/50 approach to damages similar to that in an earlier ICSID arbitration (MTD v Chile), so that Oxy’s damages would be halved as a result of its having “acted both very imprudently and illegally.”
End quote

Anyone wanting to know much more detail of exactly how the British colonial heritage old boys private central banking network has put New Zealand under the control of their receivership branch the - International Monetary Fund (IMF) - alongside their legal branch the - International Committee for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) - please read this document;http://publiccreditorbust.blogspot.co.nz/2013/04/universal-public-credit-public-policy.html

Friday, 8 August 2014

New Zealand International Finance Agreements Act Amendment Bill In 2013 the New Zealand Parliament passed an amendment bill into law, making any regulation changes of the International Monetary Fund(IMF) from then on become automatic New Zealand financial system regulation, without having to any longer pass through the New Zealand House of Representatives - as irrefutably evidenced here;

New Zealand Minister of Finance the Hon BILL ENGLISH said in debate; “I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Our commitments to the IMF are effectively premiums to an insurance policy against damage to our economy from an unstable world....... New Zealand has already agreed to these changes, and adopting the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill simply puts that agreement into practice......The bill also creates a regulation-making power in the principal Act so that further updates to the articles can be made by regulation. This power will simplify the process by which New Zealand meets its obligations. Once changes to the articles are agreed to by the requisite majority of members of the international financial institutions, New Zealand will be bound by the amendments, which means that we are required to bring our domestic legislation into line with our international obligations.”New Zealand opposition party finance spokesperson Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) said in debate; “I rise to speak to this bill, the International Finance Agreements Amendment Bill, on behalf of the Labour Party. The Labour Party will be supporting this bill to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. The Labour Party supports the function of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and broadly agrees with the Minister of Finance that these are good institutions that assist the conduct of international economic affairs in a way that benefits New Zealand as well as other countries......I think New Zealanders will have more confidence in our participation in these international fora if they think that Governments are being transparent about changes to those international agreements and the effect of those changes on New Zealand. There is already enough suspicion out there as to the effect of international agreements. We breed further suspicion if we are not open and transparent about changes to those rules......For those reasons, amongst others, the Labour Party opposes future changes to this legislation by way of the statutory regulation-making power that this amendment Act creates. We believe that future amendments ought to come back to this Parliament. If we look back in the history, it has not been an onerous task for New Zealand to amend this legislation through annual amendments or anything like that. It is relatively rare that we have amendments to this International Finance Agreements Act, which dates back to 1975. “end quotes

In the description of the bill it was said that indepth discussion of New Zealand money system structures were not needed because apparently a 'majority' of New Zealand people already know how it works as said here;"The Act does not mention monetary policy. The majority of us understand that in doing so, the bill aims to ensure that governments take explicit note of the fact that fiscal policy and monetary policy are interdependent; and that different fiscal strategies can prompt different monetary policy responses."end quote

New Zealand Green Party Co-Leader - Russel Norman - having displayed a sense of growing environmental and social injustice - had “come out” - asking hard questions of the current money system orthodoxy after his 21 Feb 2013 International Finance Agreement Amendment Bill third reading - in which Russel Norman admitted to having only recently gained an understanding of just how New Zealand money supply originates and under what terms and conditions;

"The other thing that comes out of, I think, the IMF that surprises a lot of people is when the IMF says things like most of the money that is generated is generated by the private banks. Most of us, I think—and I was certainly one of these people, until reading IMF papers—always assume that the Government created the money. That is just because I actually did not follow it closely enough, whereas the IMF is very clear that it is the private banks that create most of the money. What the IMF—or, at least, some of the researchers within the IMF—is now saying is that the Government should use its ability to create money, so that there is some publicly created money as well as the privately created money, most of which is created by the private banks.This, of course, is a pretty radical proposition, and the IMF, in putting forward this proposition, has certainly been shaking the policy debates around monetary policy all over the world, except in New Zealand, of course, where we are kind of locked into some weird backwater where the Government does not want to have a debate around any of this kind of stuff. But if you read the international literature, it is pretty good."end quote

Russel Norman made clear his views again - and clearly had not yet buckled - in this 27 May 2013 article;"In the debate around monetary policy, it is often forgotten that the default position is that the private banks create most of the money and lead the increase in the monetary supply. They then charge interest to the users of the money that they have created......The debate should be: what constraints should apply to the private creation of money given the banks’ irresponsible behaviour in the past; and should the public institutions be expanding money supply as a policy tool, to what extent, and to what purpose? Should the state be allowed to also increase the money supply for public purposes such as refilling the Natural Disaster Fund and to see what effect it can have on reducing the very damaging high NZ dollar?The answers to these questions aren’t black and white but for my pick I think we need to restrain the banks lending into the housing bubble and use a trial public creation of money to restock the Natural Disaster Fund – both to be prepared for future disasters and to see what impact it would have on the dollar.It is of course difficult to have a rational conversation around these issues in the current political context (ie Key’s scaremongering) but it is an important conversation for rational adults to have. We do have an out of control current account deficit and if we want to be masters of our own destiny we need to change policy settings as under Key’s plan our deficit and debt increase dramatically."end quote

What is made clear from Russel Norman's musings of our current money supply being 'partly funded offshore' is that he does not yet fully comprehend just how it works - and is very poor at being able to articulate the various forms of monetary easing - those that only favour the private bankers and those that dont.

New Zealand mainstream media senior editors have let New Zealand down no less than Russel Norman who they set out to ridicule.

TV3 Patrick Gower & TV1 Corin Dann just might be the highest paid clowns in New Zealand's economic circus! Radio New Zealand Jim Mora - I am quessing one of the lowest paid clowns - knows who the ring master is - but chooses to sweep it under the carpet?

New Zealand Prime Minister and former international investment banker John Key 17 November 2012;“Our (Govt) debt to GDP levels by then will top at just under 30 percent, in other words, um, we'll be relatively lowly indebted compared to countries like America and Europe, but I put it to you we are a small open economy, we have high levels of private sector debt, we, mum and dad have borrowed that debt effectively from foreigners because their local bank has sourced that from foreigners.”

What dictates if Quantitative Easing benefits your nation or only private bankers - is if the money trail of your central bank traces back to your public institutions being the lender of last resort or if your public institutions have contracted out that privilege and become just a conduit of the international private banking network.QE occurs when even if interest rates are heading to zero the economy remains flat because society has no more compacity to borrow money into circulation - so the lender of last resort then simply gets to type some money into their computer and start directly buying distressed assets of all kinds out in the market as direct stimulus. If your central bank - as is the case in New Zealand - has just become a conduit for private banking institutions - the private banking institutions gain heaps for nothing - but if your money issuance trial leads to a public institution - such as in the case of Japan who's government is typing the money into their account and buying up distressed assets - it will internally re-balance your economy.

Olivier Blanchard the current IMF Chief Economist on the record admits the shortcomings of the private central banking network administration of money systems in its area of influence in this article;Five Lessons for Economists From the Financial CrisisBy David Wessel of Wall Street Journal re;

London School of Economics and Political ScienceWhat should economists and policymakers learn from the financial crisis?Monday 25 March 2013

What did the worst financial crisis and deepest recession in 75 years teach academic economists and policymakers on whose watch it happened? At a recent London School of Economics forum, convened to honor Bank of England Governor Mervyn King,Olivier Blanchard offered some answers.

Mr. Blanchard, 64 years old, is well positioned to offer such reconsideration. An internationally prominent macroeconomist, he spent 25 years on the MIT faculty before becoming chief economist at the International Monetary Fund in September 2008, just before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.Here are Mr. Blanchard¹s five lessons in his own words, lightly edited by The Wall Street Journal’s David Wessel:

#1: Humility is in order.The Great Moderation [the economically tranquil period from 1987 to 2007] convinced too many of us that the large-economy crisis -­ a financial crisis, a banking crisis ­- was a thing of the past. It wasn’t going to happen again, except maybe in emerging markets. History was marching on.My generation, which was born after World War II, lived with the notion that the world was getting to be a better and better place. We knew how to do things better, not only in economics but in other fields as well. What we have learned is that¹s not true. History repeats itself. We should have known.#2: The financial system matters — a lot.It’s not the first time that we¹re confronted with [former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld called “unknown unknowns,” things that happened that we hadn’t thought about. There is another example in macro-economics:The oil shocks of the 1970s during which we were students and we hadn’t thought about it. It took a few years, more than a few years, for economists to understand what was going on. After a few years, we concluded that we could think of the oil shock as yet another macroeconomic shock. We did not need to understand the plumbing. We didn’t need to understand the details of the oil market. When there’s an increase in the price of energy or materials, we can just integrate it into our macro models -­ the implications of energy prices on inflation and so on.This is different. What we have learned about the financial system is that the problem is in the plumbing and that we have to understand the plumbing. Before I came to the Fund, I thought of the financial system as a set of arbitrage equations. Basically the Federal Reserve would chose one interest rate, and then the expectations hypothesis would give all the rates everywhere else with premia which might vary, but not very much. It was really easy. I thought of people on Wall Street as basically doing this for me so I didn¹t have to think about it.What we have learned is that that’s not the case. In the financial system, a myriad of distortions or small shocks build on each other. When there are enough small shocks, enough distortions, things can go very bad. This has fundamental implications for macro-economics. We do macro on the assumption that we can look at aggregates in some way and then just have them interact in simple models. I still think that¹s the way to go, but this shows the limits of that approach. When it comes to the financial system, it¹s very clear that the details of the plumbing matter.#3 Interconnectedness matters.This crisis started in the U.S. and across the ocean in a matter of days and weeks. Each crisis, even in small islands, potentially has effects on the rest of the world. The complexity of the cross border claims by creditors and by debtors clearly is something that many of us had not fully realized: the cross border movements triggered by the risk-on/risk-off movements, which countries are safe havens, and when and why? Understanding this has become absolutely essential. What happens in the part of the world cannot be ignored by the rest of the world. The fact that we all spend so much time thinking about Cyprus in the last few days is an example of that.It’s also true in trade side. We used to think if one country was doing badly, then exports to that country would do badly and therefore the exporting countries would do badly. In our models, the effect was relatively small. One absolutely striking fact of the crisis is the collapse of trade in 2009. Output went down. Trade collapsed. Countries which felt they were not terribly exposed through trade turned out to be enormously exposed.#4 We don’t know if macro-prudential tools work.It’s very clear that the traditional monetary and fiscal tools are just not good enough to deal with the very specific problems in the financial system. This has led to the development of macro-prudential tools, which what may or may not become the third leg of macroeconomic policies.[Macroprudential tools allow a central bank to restrain lending in specific sectors without raising interest rates for the whole economy, such as increasing the minimum down payment required to get a mortgage, which reduces the loan-to-value ratio.] In principle, they can address specific issues in the financial sector. If there is a problem somewhere you can target the tool at the problem and not use the policy interest rate, which basically is kind of an atomic bomb without any precision.The big question here is: How reliable are these tools? How much can they be used? The answer — from some experiments before the crisis with loan-to-value ratios and during crisis with variations in cyclical bank capital ratios or loan-to-value ratios or capital controls, such as in Brazil — is this: They work but they don’t work great. People and institutions find ways around them. In the process of reducing the problem somewhere you tend to create distortions elsewhere.#5 Central bank independence wasn’t designed for what central banks are now asked to do.There is two-way interaction between monetary policy and macro prudential tools. When Ben Bernanke does expansionary monetary policy, quantitative easing, and interest rates on many assets are close to zero, there’s a tendency by many players to take risks to increase their rate of return Some of this risk actually we want them to take. Some we don¹t want them to take. That is the interaction of monetary policy on the financial system.You also have it the other way around. If you use macro prudential tools to, say, slow down the building in the housing sector but you have an effect on aggregate demand, which is going to decrease output.The question is: How do you organize the use of these tools? It makes sense to have them under the same roof. In practice means the central bank. But that poses questions not only about coordination between the two functions, but also about central bank independence.One of the major achievements of the last 20 years is that most central banks have become independent of elected governments. Independence was given because the mandate and the tools were very clear. The mandate was primarily inflation, which can be observed over time. The tool was some short-term interest rate that could be used by the central bank to try to achieve the inflation target. In this case, you can give some independence to the institution in charge of this because the objective is perfectly well defined, and everybody can basically observe how well the central bank does..If you think now of central banks as having a much larger set of responsibilities and a much larger set of tools, then the issue of central bank independence becomes much more difficult. Do you actually want to give the central bank the independence to choose loan-to-value ratios without any supervision from the political process. Isn’t this going to lead to a democratic deficit in a way in which the central bank becomes too powerful? I¹m sure there are ways out. Perhaps there could be independence with respect to some dimensions of monetary policy -­ the traditional ones — and some supervision for the rest or some interaction with a political process.End quote

when the foreign control of the RBNZ is something former RBNZ Governor Alan Bollard made very clear in 2010 book he wrote titled – Crisis – excerpts below;http://publiccreditorbust.blogspot.co.nz/2013/11/book-excerpts-crisis-by-new-zealand.html*Pg 19-20 - “Banking practices differ around the world, but we ensure ours meet international standards. These are set by a somewhat shadowy group called the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Comprised of representatives of large countries( not including New Zealand ), the group meets in Switzerland at the Bank of International Settlements (BIS).”

*pg 98 - Agreed convention at the Bank of International Settlement means that what is said in the room stays in the room.

*pg 69 - We had lived through the biggest shock to the financial system since the Great Depression. But a financial shock of this magnitude was clearly also going to cause significant economic damage. This effect first showed in the large, northern, developed economies with the biggest financial sectors. The festering finance problems were flowing into the non-financial sectors, what we call the “real economy”.

*pg 186 - The worlds financial system and the worlds economy are inextricably linked; a banking crisis hurts growth in the “real economy”.

*pg 145 - For the first time as an economist, I started seriously to wonder about just how tenuous our Western market-based world might be.End quote

New Zealand really is presently very poorly served by its public service and media who in pursuit of the quickest way to pay day are to quick to swallow and regurgitate second hand summarised information without researching the veracity of it.